"We have turtle bones, crocodile bones, and deer bones that have cut marks on them, … evidence that humans were exploiting, were feeding off these remains, these creatures.

"But for me the thrill is finding the hard physical evidence for people. And we have that.

"We found only fragments of human skull bone, but we hope in the future we … might find a jaw or even a complete skull to give us a much clearer picture of who these people were."

The rich layers containing evidence of life are around the 50,000 to 55,000 year mark, which suggests humans were in these caves at least 20,000 years earlier than Deep Skull if the dates are confirmed.

But there is no evidence of human fossils in deeper layers corresponding to the Toba eruption in the 2-metre square.

Dr Curnoe is optimistic evidence of older humans that lived before or during the cataclysmic event may still lie in the deeper layers of other parts of the cave.

Over the next year, he plans to return to the cave in search of human remains and stone tools at the very bottom, and refine the dating. He hopes to build a much more detailed picture of life in the Borneo rainforest thousands of years ago before the Toba eruption.

"Each time we go back the dig gets bigger … but of course we really need to focus on these very early layers in the cave," Dr Curnoe says.

"What we really hope for is that we can find some human remains at the very bottom … who were perhaps older than 80,000 years ago, and identify who they were.

"Were they modern humans like us? Did we settle that part of the world this early, or were these the last of the archaic people living in the area before our kind got in?"

In her resignation from politics, Kelly O'Dwyer said she feared another miscarriage in Canberra, far from home. Her announcement is shocking for more than just party-political reasons, writes Emma A. Jane.